GMO Propaganda and Neoliberalism vs Localisation and Agroecology

Colin Todhunter

What people communicate is a matter of choice. But what can be more revealing are the issues they choose to avoid. There are certain prominent pro-GMO activists who describe themselves as ‘science communicators’. They hit out at those who question their views or who have valid criticisms of GM technology and then play the role of persecuted victim, believing that, as the self-appointed arbiters of righteousness, they are beyond reproach, although given their duplicity nothing could be further from the truth.

Instead of being open to questioning, they attempt to close down debate to push a flawed technology they have a vested (financial-career) interest in, while all the time appealing to their self-perceived authority, usually based on holding a PhD in molecular biology or a related discipline.

They relentlessly promote GM and industrial agriculture and unjustifiably cast critics as zealots who are in cahoots with Greenpeace or some other group they have a built-in dislike of. And they cynically raise or lower the bar of ‘credibility’ by ad hominem and misrepresentation so that studies, writers and scientists who agree with them are commended while those who don’t become subjected to smear campaigns.

Often with ties to neoliberal think tanks, pro-GMO lobbyists call for more deregulation and criticise elected governments or regulatory bodies which try to protect the public interest, especially where genetic engineering and associated chemical inputs (for instance, glyphosate) are concerned. The same people push the bogus idea that only GM agriculture can feed the world, while seeking to discredit and marginalise alternative models like agroecology and ignoring the structural violence and injustices brought about by global agricapital interests (from whom they receive funding) which help determine Codex, World Bank, IMF and WTO policies. By remaining silent or demonstrating wilful ignorance about the dynamics and injustices of the political economy of food and agriculture, they tacitly approve of its consequences.

They also frame the GMO debate as pro-science/pro-GMO vs anti-science/anti-GMO: an industry-promoted false dichotomy that has sought to close down any wider discussion that may lead the focus to fall on transnational agribusiness interests and their role in determining an exploitative global food regime and how GM fits in with this.

This is how ideologues act; not how open discourse and science is carried out or ‘communicated’.

Broadening the debate

A participant in any meaningful discussion about GM would soon appreciate that ethical, political, environmental and sociological considerations should determine the efficacy and relevance of this technology in conjunction with scientific considerations. Unfortunately, pro-GMO advocates want to depoliticise food and agriculture and focus on the ‘science’ of GM, yield-output reductionist notions of ‘productivity’ and little else, defining the ‘problem’ of food and agriculture solely as a narrow technocratic issue.

But to understand the global food regime, we must move beyond technology. Food and agriculture have become wedded to structures of power that have created food surplus and food deficit areas and which have restructured indigenous agriculture across the world and tied it to an international system of trade based on export-oriented mono-cropping, commodity production for a manipulated and volatile international market and indebtedness to global financial institutions.

If any one country epitomises much of what is wrong with the global food regime, it is Argentina, where in an October 26th 2018 article (‘Soy destruction in Argentina leads straight to our dinner plates’) The Guardian newspaper’s analysis of (GM) soy cultivation highlighted many of the issues set out above.

Whether the impacts of the global food regime result from World Bank/IMF directives and geopolitical lending strategies, neoliberal plunder ‘ease-of-doing-business’ ideology, undemocratic corporate-written trade deals or WTO rules, we are seeing the negative impacts on indigenous systems of food and agriculture across the world, not least in India, where a million farmers intend to march to Delhi and the national parliament between 28 and 30 November.

India’s manufactured ongoing agrarian crisis is adversely affecting the bulk of the country’s 840 million rural dwellers. And all for what? To run down and displace the existing system of peasant-farmer-based production with a discredited, ecologically unsustainable (GMO) model run along neoliberal ‘free’ market lines by global agribusiness, a model which is only profitable because it passes on its massive health, environmental and social costs to the public.

Neoliberal dogma

Tim Worstall of the Adam Smith Institute in London says of India’s agrarian crisis that Indian farmers should be left to go bust because they are uncompetitive and relatively unproductive. But even where farmers in India produce world record yields, they are still heavily indebted. So why can’t they compete?

Putting the huge external costs of the model of industrial agriculture which Worstall compares Indian agriculture to aside (which he conveniently ignores), the issue is clear: a heavily subsidised US/EU agriculture depresses prices for Indian farmers both at home and on the international market.

Policy analyst Devinder Sharma says that subsidies provided to US wheat and rice farmers are more than the market worth of these two crops. He also notes that, per day, each cow in Europe receives a subsidy worth more than an Indian farmer’s daily income. He suggests: let the US and EU do away with subsidies, relieving taxpayers of such a costly burden and let Indian farmers compete properly; then see that it is the Indian farmer who produces the cheapest food; and then imagine US consumers benefitting from this cheap food.

That is the ‘free’ market which could exist. A fair one not distorted by subsidies. Not the type of market that currently exists and which is ‘free’ only within the ideological parameters set by Worstall and others who promote it.

Proponents of the ‘free’ market and GMOs are big on ‘choice’: letting ‘the market’, the consumer or the farmer decide, without anyone imposing their agenda. This is little more than rhetoric which fails to stand up to scrutiny, given the strategically embedded influence of agricapital over policy makers. If anything encapsulates the nonsense and hypocrisy surrounding this notion of choice are reports about Monsanto and its cynical manipulation of agriculture in Punjab.

According to an article in Delhi’s Sunday Guardian in late 2017 (‘Monsanto’s profits, not Diwali, creating smoke in Delhi’), India’s surplus food grain supply is an uncomfortable fact for the pro-GMO lobby. The piece notes that in 2012 the then Punjab Chief Minister asked Monsanto to set up a research centre for creating maize and, due to fears over water shortages, announced plans to reduce the area under rice cultivation to around 45% to grow maize. Fear-mongering about rice cultivation was reaching fever pitch, stoked by an advertisement campaign from a group of scientists who appealed ‘Reduce the area under rice, save water, save Punjab’.

Conveniently, Monsanto (now Bayer) offers its GM maize as a solution that will increase the level of subsoil water, although that corporation’s inputs and Green Revolution practices led to problems in Punjab and elsewhere in the first place. For instance, fertilisers and pesticides have accumulated in the ground water (causing massive health issues) and their use has also led to poor water retention in soil, leading farmers to pump excessive amounts of ground water.

Punjab’s plan to reduce the area under rice cultivation (a staple food for large sections of the Indian population) with what will most likely be GM animal feed is part of a cynical tactic. Of course, any resulting gap between supply of and demand for food in India will be conveniently filled via global agribusiness and an influx of GMO produce from abroad or by growing it in India (have no doubt, the push is on for that too).

It is reminiscent of unscrupulous attempts to undermine India’s edible oils sector in the late 1990s and current attempts to break traditional cotton cultivation pathways in India to help usher in herbicide-tolerant seeds (which have now ‘miraculously’ appeared on the market – illegally). The ability of hugely powerful corporations to flex their financial muscle and exert their considerable political clout to manufacture ‘choice’ and manipulate policies is the reality of neoliberal capitalism.

Those pro-GMO ‘science communicators’ are silent on such matters and, as with their fellow neoliberal ideologues, have nothing of any substance to say on these types of ‘market-distorting’ power relations, which make a mockery of their ‘free’ choice and ‘free’ market creed.

Indeed, a recent report in The Guardian indicates that neoliberal ‘austerity’ in the UK has had little to do with economics, having failed in its objective of reducing the national debt, and much to do with social engineering. But this is the ideological basis of modern neoliberal capitalism: dogma masquerading as economics to help justify the engineering of the world in the image of undemocratic, unaccountable corporations.

Agroecology and food sovereignty

The industrial agriculture that Worstall compares Indian farmers’ productivity with is outperformed by smallholder-based agriculture in terms of, for example, diversity of food output, nutrition per acre and efficient water use. Imagine what could be achieved on a level playing field whereby smallholder farming receives the type of funding and political commitment currently given to industrial agriculture.

In fact, we do not have to imagine; in places where agroecology has been scaled up, we are beginning to see the benefits. The principles of agroecology include self-reliance, localisation and food sovereignty. This type of agriculture does not rely on top-down corporate ‘science’, corporate owned or controlled seeds or proprietary inputs. It is potentially more climate resilient, labour intensive (job creating), more profitable for farmers and can contribute to soil quality and nutrient-enhanced/diverse diets. Moreover, it could help reinvigorate rural India and its villages.

When the British controlled India, they set about breaking the self-reliance of the Indian village. In a 2009 article by Bhavdeep Kang (‘Can the Indian farmer withstand predatory international giants?’), it is stated:

The British Raj initiated the destruction of the village communities, famously described by Lord Metcalfe as ‘little republics, having nearly everything they can want within themselves.’ India’s ability to endure, he wrote, derived from these village communities: ‘They seem to last where nothing else lasts. Dynasty after dynasty tumbles down but the village community remains the same. It is in a high degree conducive to their happiness, and to the enjoyment of a great portion of freedom and independence.’”

Metcalfe said this in 1830. However, since independence from the British, India’s rulers have further established ‘village India’s’ dependency on central government. And now a potential death knell for rural India is underway as India’s ruling elite, exhibiting a severe bout of ‘Stockholm syndrome’, sells out the nation to not only Western agribusiness but also to US finance and intelligence interests.

Whether it concerns India or elsewhere, to see the advantages of agroecology, there are those economists, political leaders and ‘science communicators’ who must remove the self-imposed blinkers. This would involve shifting their priorities away from promoting career-building technologies and facilitating neoliberal capitalism towards working for justice, equality, peace and genuine grass-root food sovereignty.

To do that, though, such figures would first have to begin to bite the hand that feeds them.

Colin Todhunter is an independent journalist who writes on development, environmental issues, politics, food and agriculture. He was named in August 2018 by Transcend Media Services as one of 400 Living Peace and Justice Leaders and Models in recognition of his journalism.

9 Comments

The pattern of the deceit is a signature that once recognised will be exposed as the lie and the father of it regardless what facet or arena of human endeavour it seeks to interject itself.

Once understood, this can then read directly what is meant.
Science communicator is doublespeak for replacement of both science and communication as the device for the covering rather than revealing of truth by a manipulative intent that masks itself as a communication. Communication is a quality of exchange between those sharing the willingness or indeed the shared purpose OF relationship as the basis of arriving at an outcome. The manipulation or masking of private agenda in the FORMS of communication engages in the phishing substitutions of seeming currency for lack of substance that operates the undermining OF the true as the condition in which it can SEEM to be powerful or effective.
As people drift into such usage, the false becomes associated with risk or conflict avoidance and the true becomes associated with dissonance and a call to be shut down.

In withdrawing or withholding of presence, is a mind of fear-driven control and ‘protection’ invited to step in – unless others extend their presence on behalf of your true interests as their own. These intercessions are seen as threat by the control mind and are targeted for subversion or suppression.

I write this in abstract terms because it operates at a pre-personal level – or perhaps at the point where the persona or mask is raised against a feared communication/outcome.

Identifying the false framing so as to release it from distorting the picture is then to look directly on what is really being ‘offered’ in such complex ‘scientific’ instrument. I chose such a term because the banking parallel was toxic debt – toxic being given by bankers to their own sense of ‘assets’ that in fact had no value at all – and so a negative relative to their inflated self-sense. What is being offered is death – in one form or another and by quicker or slower means.

Learning NOT to be susceptible to phishing attacks or false flags and other manipulative deceits is not simply to make a database of known exploits – though Schumacher’s 38 stratagems lays out some ground for principles, but to identify and release these as our own currency. To stop using it, reinforcing it and normalising it.

The audacity of the intent insinuates possession of power, and blitzkrieg tactics or heavily reinforced pressure on key points at key moments to which most roll over or are so unsettled that by the time they regroup the territory is already taken. Most anything that can be then brought against them can be denied voice, credibility or effect – and even be used or turned to their own advantage in targeting the emotional reactivity as the vector of further manipulation.

Getting angry isn’t helpful EXCEPTING to empower a deeper sweeping of our OWN allegiances, susceptibilities and self-evasions. This energy is then our grounding from which to act, speak or extend a genuine presence amidst the temptation to join in hate – because that is what victimism works; the lure to join in hate as an escape from fears and as a discharge of the hateful sense of self/world in a targeted sacrificial victim – or targeted ‘evil; in which the ‘target is smeared or associated’.

To the self-inflated possessor or wealth and power – anything that exposes a lack of substance is threat – thus anything true – and everything has to be defined and enacted to reinforce the assertions and distorted overlay or interjections of an ‘attack on reality’ by operating as the ‘gatekeepers’ or ‘priest-class’ to its definitions – also known as narrative control.

All who are invested in masking against feared truth are tacitly operating a bias or blind-eye to truth – but in various ways or patterns. The demand of a lie to ‘work’ as a replacement for true is that it be believed necessary of desirable OVER true – and seeks justification in its own survival equating with true and overriding need to prevail.

But the protection is given to the lie and to the fears the lie is made to hide – NOT to the truth of who anyone or anything is.

I applaud this article for deconstructing the lie so that it can be clearly seen as a lie instead of argued with as if true.
Don’t enter the frame of a false assertion. Jordan Peterson is adept at recognising such traps, as well as in responding in relationship to what is in fact going on. NOT giving power away is retaining your ‘marbles’. Everyone develops their own ways of responding or choosing to NOT respond to what they recognize to be present or indeed presenting AS IF a presence. NOTICING where where give power away (invalidate our self-experience), is the beginning of growing the awareness and freedom to choose differently. Guilting ourselves or others is NOT a means to power – but a false pact from which we will not escape – until we stop resorting to using it. Of course a genuine remorse for error is a call for immediate correction, but not for toxic self hate – nor for the ‘outsourcing’ of self-hate away from self so as to be able to persist in a lie without apparently meeting due consequences. But to give a lie is to live a lie and a world of lies is no more real for its ‘settled consensus reality’

I always find it galling that the proponents of something they call ‘free-trade’ actually exists in the world of actually existing capitalism. Free trade doesn’t exist, never has, and never will. Agriculture is one example where both the US and EU massively subsidize their agriculture sector in order to undercut the farmers of lesser developed countries in the developing world. Even someone like Joseph Stiglitz has drawn attention to this in his study of subsidized US cotton producers who can sell on world markets below the the market price. This was the case in Mali where the indigenous cotton producers could not compete with subsidized US cotton and subsequently went bankrupt. (The Roaring 90s – Stiglitz)

Moreover the developed world not only subsidizes agriculture, but also grants tax exemptions, for R&D, and uses an array of tariff and non-tariff barriers in other industries to advantage its own corporations, as well as using institutions like the IMF and WTO which it basically control to further its own national interests. But hey, no nation ever made the transition from developing to developed economies on the basis of ‘free-trade’. This economic development was a state-sponsored mercantilist policy, initially carried out by the US and Germany in the 19th century in order to break British industrial hegemony, which it did.

In the footsteps of the US and Germany came the East Asian development strategy with Japan, South Korea and China.

The Great German economic theorist, Friedrich List put it this way.

”Under George the First English Statesmen had long ago clearly perceived the grounds on which the greatness of a nation depends. At the opening of Parliament in 1721 the King is made to say by the ministry , that, ‘it is evident that nothing as much contributes to promote the public well-being as the exportation of manufactured goods and the importation of foreign raw material. This for centuries has been the ruling maxim of English commercial policy … just as it was in the days of Queen Elizabeth 1”’

Enough said. This free-market nonsense, including the proposed free-market from Lisbon to Vladivostock should be consigned to the flames like most of the other contributions to political economy.

Thank you Colin Todhunter. I’ve lived for many years near a major Agricultural School who’s history parallels that of Industrial Farming. Local farming now mocks the development of the Industrial Tomato which has become nearly inedible. It’s produced for canning and other industrial food operations and has been destroyed as a good tasting food. The American Tomato story is tragic, but the combination of industrial farming and higher education is even more dismal.

I am happy to report that a newer generation of educators seem to be working much harder on sustainable and edible farming.

“… Policy analyst Devinder Sharma says that subsidies provided to US wheat and rice farmers are more than the market worth of these two crops. He also notes that, per day, each cow in Europe receives a subsidy worth more than an Indian farmer’s daily income. He suggests: let the US and EU do away with subsidies, relieving taxpayers of such a costly burden and let Indian farmers compete properly; then see that it is the Indian farmer who produces the cheapest food; and then imagine US consumers benefitting from this cheap food …”

Erm, shouldn’t Indian farmers be producing food to feed people in India first, before any surplus grain or other food is exported, and shouldn’t the farmers be encouraged to grow food and other crops suited to the climatic and soil conditions in India (rather than Western foods usually grown in temperate conditions), and which does not indirectly contribute to increased carbon-related pollution in the air and the oceans (through air and sea transport)?

Indian farmers might produce food more cheaply than farmers in the US and the EU do but bear in mind the food Indian farmers produce has to travel long distances to reach consumers in the US and the EU. Factor in the costs of transportation and even the costs of pollution and perhaps the food produced in India isn’t so cheap after all. And what about feeding Indians first?

Not to mention the fact that it’s rather risky for consumers around the world to rely on an ever more narrow range of food producers and a narrow range of foods produced in particular parts of the world. Whatever happened to the notion of food diversity and getting our foods from a variety of producers and environments?

US farmers are basically just civil servants.
A US sugar beet farmer gets 60% of his income from a state subsidy, a cotton farmer 70%.
It’s substantially the same in the protectionist EU.
Third World countries don’t need aid, they need genuine free trade.

As usual, it is not the science which is wrong, just the way it is used by the multi-nationals. Instead of making plants hardier to their environment, they made them hardier to chemical spray. They also made sure that their plants can’t seed and the farmer has to buy new seed every year. Two expenses which overwhelm the profits of the farmers and increase the profits of the multi-nationals tenfold.

Taking neighbour farmers to court if they don’t use GM if it is found that wind has blown GM seed over the boundary onto the innocent farmers land is also something that suggests that authorities have been bought.

Greed for maximum profit will eventually be what destroys the planet when a good profit would have sufficed and allow improvement in all aspects of the food-chain.

Follow OffGuardian via Email

OffG on Twitter

OffG’s editors

About

OffGuardian is the creation of people from different parts of the world committed to the original vision which drew us together on The Guardian‘s CiF pages...Tired of being censored by our beloved, once-upon-a-time left-of-centre newspaper, in February 2015 we decided to create our own platform for airing our unacceptable opinions.

If you’re also sick of being stifled, moderated, slandered as 'Putinbots' or worse, and censored to oblivion on any of the Readers’ Comments sections of our mainstream press, come and tell us about it.